Kinect for Xbox One coming to Windows, will be part of updated SDK

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The new Kinect sensor for Xbox One announced on Tuesday at the Xbox Reveal event in Seattle will be added to the Kinect for Windows SDK Pocket-lint can confirm.

"It will be added, we will have more details to share later in the year," Scott Evans told Pocket-lint after we got a first hand preview of the Kinect's new capabilities at Microsoft's HQ.

While it is not sure as yet as to whether the Kinect for Xbox One sensor will be sold separately for Windows users to use, developers will no doubt be over the moon with the news.

The original Kinect sensor was specifically designed to be used with computers, and includes a shortened USB cable to ensure reliability across a broad range of computers. There is no confirmation the same will happen again. What might make a difference however is that with the new Kinect for Xbox One, a lot of the computational processing has been moved to the console.

The new Kinect sensor has been hugely upgraded with a new 1080p full-colour 16:9 camera, a 3D sensor with the capability to capture a lot more detail, an infrared camera that can see you in the dark, and a wider field of view to catch more of the action in front of the screen between 1m and 4.5m.

Treated to a quick play with the new sensor, the capabilities are so powerful that Microsoft says it can now detect fluctuations in your face to determine your heart rate as well as show forces such as whether you are standing on one leg or punching through the air.

It can also detect whether you are engaged with the computer, and whether or not your mouth is open.

Aside from the camera, Microsoft says that it has also enhanced the capabilities of the four microphones on board giving them even greater power to cut through ambient noise - something we were also able to witness first hand.

Future uses of the new technology in games could be that the game's AI automatically adapts to whether you are getting stressed or not or if the game doesn't seem to be presenting a big enough challenge for you and you look bored.

What would you use the new Kinect for? Let us know in the comments below.